All of Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato. Whitehead
At the heart of the Fate Project is a love for ancient Greek culture and philosophy, but this love is no mere infatuation. There is good reason to admire and even emulate the Greek view. The weave of ancient Greek thought, art, politics, and everyday life was so exquisitely integrated that we moderns may be hard pressed to understand it. But this is not merely a cultural or historical difference. Forgetting what the Greeks knew and lived has thrown us into a world so driven by hubris, greed, narrow thinking, banality, double standards, and the heartless amassing of wealth and power by the few at the expense of the many that we have set ourselves against the greater forces we no longer understand, and taken up life at the brink of daily calamity. Nowhere is the contrast between the ancient and modern world view more evident than in language, a study of which invariably shows us how much treasure has been lost over the centuries. The Greeks had words for things we don't even experience—words that were diluted in the translation from Greek to Latin, dispersed in subsequent secondary translations, e.g., through German into English, and lost all but entirely in the assumptions of modern life. Our word nature, for example, is hopelessly inert when placed beside the Greek word physis (pronounced FYOO-sis), which signified an activity of standing forth and resisting a fall into non-being. Recognizing nature not as a noun but as a verb requires a leap back to the ancient way of looking at things and a requickening of a deeply intuitive and poetic way of grasping (or being grasped by) the world around us. For the Greeks, a tree was an activity; trees "treed" in a defiant and energetic refusal to be overtaken by nonexistence. Such a vision implies mutuality, even dialogue with the natural order, and would render our modern inclination to tame and dissect nature unthinkable.
Another example: The word augury acquired the relatively anemic meaning, in Latin, of "the practice of divination." In the Greek reality, it meant "reading the future in the flight of birds." Here again, we have the tacit recognition that nature is personal; birds do not merely fly—they fly in secret formations that a seer (one who can see) can use to reach his or her innermost knowing. At every turn, Greek language reveals a richly philosophic and poetic grounding in life, a grounding rooted in awe, myth, a sense of belonging and place, and a passion for excellence in every area. The Greek ideal of arete—translated as both "virtue" and "excellence" played a central role in Greek life in a way that brought the individual into immediate relation to the divine, imbuing life with a richness that has been so deeply buried by centuries of "progress" we may not even be aware of it enough to miss it, except in a pervasive and persistent feeling of emptiness or ennui—a feeling of homesickness in the face of what civilization has become in the age of hubris.
Look death in the face with joyful hope, and consider this a lasting truth: the righteous man has nothing to fear, neither in life, nor in death, and the gods will not forsake him.
Socrates
Ask anyone what he or she thinks of the idea of fate, and as a rule, you'll find the idea is unpopular, even distasteful. Destiny is a far friendlier term, since it implies that the power and authority for our life is in our hands, while fate—that bothersome little four-letter word—implies just the opposite. If our life is fated, then the center of authority lies outside us. Destiny may be wrought from within, but fate is imposed from without. We can tempt fate, resist fate, try to escape our fate, risk a fate worse than death, and so on, but we can't avoid fate. We are in the hands of fate, like it or not, and for rugged individualists for whom free will and manifest destiny are utterly presumed, this is not an easy pill to swallow. This dark view of fate is captured in W. Somerset Maugham's, The Appointment in Samarra (1933), a modern recounting of an ancient tale:
"There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, 'Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.' The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw Death standing in the crowd and he said, 'Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?' 'That was not a threatening gesture, said Death, 'it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.'"
As with Oedipus, the actions taken by the servant to evade his fate lead him to the very fate he tries to evade. Maugham goes so far as to personify fate as Death, which is hardly untrue to the usual meaning of the word, for fate commonly implies ominous portent, and even appears as the root of the word fatal.
Given all this, is it any wonder that the idea that we're in the hands of fate is not particularly appealing? Yet this view of fate is not the only one, and not the best one. As we'll see, fate becomes dark only when it is met with hubris and the refusal to acknowledge that there are forces outside us to which we are subject. Acknowledging fate is prerequisite to choosing to live in friendly cooperation with it, a choice that invites fate to be friendly in return.
He who submits to fate without complaint is wise. Euripides
The aim of fate practice is not to imitate the Greeks, but to emulate them. So, for example, we are not looking to establish a notion of the gods in the sense that was central the Greek view, but we may use the term "the gods" as a shorthand for those forces beyond our will that operate in any situation to influence and even determine the outcome.
The basis of the idea that such forces exist and that a complete model for living must find a way to acknowledge them comes from chaos theory, which tells us that subtle, distant, and seemingly irrelevant causes may become part of a complex, system-wide concatenation with dramatic, far-reaching, and surprising results. The classic example from chaos theory is the so-called butterfly effect: Given the complexity of weather systems, a butterfly flapping its wings in China can set up a series of intricate, amplifying causes and effects that produces a thunderstorm or hurricane many thousands of miles away. No intellect has the resources to discern or map the "chaotic" factors that suddenly may alter the equation of possible causal elements in even simple systems, yet such elements can be and often are decisive. The red light that annoys the driver hurrying to work may, in a larger context, save his life five intersections down the road.
Fate may be understood, then, as the sum of "chaotic" forces at work in any situation, forces ordinarily beyond our awareness and control. These forces may show up in benign or adverse ways, depending on whether we cooperate with and defer to them, or assert our will over and against them. The one choice we have in any situation—and this choice determines whether the outcome is favorable or not—is self-knowledge and humility or presumption and hubris. The answer to the riddle of the Sphynx given by Oedipus is "Man." In the morning of human life, when we are infants, we crawl on all fours to get around—we "walk on four feet." In the afternoon, we travel on two feet, having learned to walk. And in old age, the "evening," we must depend on a staff or cane for support as we make our way along, thus walking "on three feet." Fate practice teaches that "walking on three feet," or living in deliberate acceptance of our dependence on the forces beyond our will that move through the world, is not something we have to wait for old age to learn to use. We don't have to be old to be wise. We can admit our dependence on the forces of fate and by doing so, come into friendly cooperation with them now. Such an offering alone is pleasing to "the gods." and opens us to receive a better fate than we invite through hubris, resistance, and living by force of will.
A small rock holds back a great wave.
Homer
The fate model is based on chaos theory, which states that in any nonlinear, dynamic system, there are initial, random forces that cannot be identified or mapped, but that accumulate to the point that they determine eventual outcomes—a condition referred to in chaos theory as "sensitivity" or "sensitivity dependence" and commonly known as the "butterfly effect." Thus small variations in the initial conditions of a chaotic system (e.g., the weather) build randomly but deterministically to produce wide variations in the long term behavior of the system. A geologic shift, for example, can produce a tsunami in which hundreds of thousands perish because a countless number of otherwise unrelated factors placed them on a beach in the deadly wave's path, while others are spared by otherwise unrelated conditions that placed them elsewhere.
In the 1964 film based on Edward K. Gann's book, Fate is the Hunter, a man investigating the crash of a jet airliner refuses to accept that the crash resulted from pilot error. His search uncovers a series of "chaotic" factors that seem in hindsight practically to have conspired to cause the crash. At one point in the movie, Jack Savage, a commercial pilot (played by Rod Taylor) is asked how he can be so cool about death, and replies: "The way I figure it, if it's your time go why fight it; if not, why worry about it?" This is the philosophy of a man who has made peace with chaotic forces and befriended fate.Fate theory tells us that when we adopt the stand taken by Jack Savage, we not only enjoy greater peace of mind than we can by trying to fight or control the chaotic forces of fate, but also change our fate itself for the better. There is no escape from the chaotic undertow of life. We live at intersections of unpredictable and often intractable forces that may make their appearance suddenly. It has been the great error of humankind to ignore or underestimate these forces while exaggerating the reach and power of our will. Again and again, we see that "pride goeth before a fall." This is why humility is the only safe path.
Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weakness. • Democritus
A traditional argument holds that the principle of fate contradicts the principle of free will. Since our power to make choices is both experientially self-evident and intuitively convincing, the argument concludes that fate must not operate, or at least not operate fully in human experience.
On the face of it, this seems to hold water. To exercise our free will is to be self-determining, and how can we determine anything if fate already has determined it for us?
According to fate theory, however, free will and fate—and this means fate as a deterministic principle—are not mutually exclusive. The seeming contradiction between them is resolved when we recognize that our free will is itself the deciding factor in determining our fate, though only generally. Fate theory goes on to explain that the character of our fate is wrought by a fundamental choice—namely, how we stand in relation to those forces beyond our will that determine our fate itself. In this way, free will is conserved within the deterministic model of fate, but at the level of structure or form rather than situational content. The specifics are determined by "the gods," but we have something to say about it.
This primal choice—and it is a choice we make all the time—is to acknowledge the gods or deny them, to defer or to resist, to cooperate with life or set ourselves in willfulness against it. We're free, then, to adopt a stand of humility or hubris. Fate practice casts its vote for humility, embodied in the five points of practice, which give us a wonderfully simple and powerful way to translate the primal choice into action—through the willingness to live innocently rather than bound by conclusions, to show up rather than hide, and to take ourselves lightly rather than carry the self as a burden. These choices establish the nature of our stance toward fate, which in turn moves the unseen hand of the gods through the unpredictable efficiency of chaotic unfolding. It is at this intersection of choice and chaos that our fate is worked out and brought to light in everyday events.
Thus, though we are, as Socrates tells us, "the chattel of the gods," our fate lies in our hands, for its origins lie within our character. |
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The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates
All untruth comes from hubris, from assuming, believing, or insisting that our will is greater than the truth, which means greater than the the gods, for the gods alone establish what is true and what is not. Our reason for doing this matters not at all. No one who forsakes the truth can be on friendly terms with fate. Those who love the truth are loved by the gods. Because they place the truth ahead of self-interest, their interests are protected by fate.
Living truthfully means practicing the great Delphic admonition taken up by Socrates, "Know thyself." We do this by using the method he gave us—the disclosure of previously hidden truths through dialectical scrutiny. Gradually, as we take part in Socratic dialogue, the things we thought we knew fall away, and we see that we were only dreaming we knew them. The truth of how little we know is recollected, and in this recollection, we come home to the truth of our dependence on the gods..
Truthfulness is the mother of practice, for it informs showing up, innocence, and diligence as well as dialogue. To be truthful means to defer to things as they are, to bow before what is rather than asserting one's will. All untruthfulness is an expression of willfulness and hubris.
The resolve to live truthfully imbues us with that quiet strength known by all who have nothing to hide, who meet life face-to-face, whose character has become a compass heading through the storms of the world.
When one is willing and eager, the gods join in. Aeschylus
Fate practice requires that we "show up," which means that we take part in our life and the world around us in whatever way feels natural, so that our fate can find us. It is a living statement of the willingness to place oneself squarely where one is anyway—in fate's hands.
Sitting at home and waiting for anything amounts to poor practice. It is not that one is not participating when one sits at home and waits; it is rather than one is participating unskillfully. Acknowledging the workings of fate through chaotic elements, we know that we have no power to make anything happen, because we have no way to even anticipate, let alone manage these elements. The conditions of life are wrought by the gods, who speak the creative word or logos (from the Greek legein, "to gather into being"), but in this speaking, they take into account where we stand.
In Genesis, after Adam eats the forbidden fruit, he goes into hiding. It is an absurd reaction, since he is attempting to hide from the Omniscient. Oddly, God asks Adam where he is, but clearly this can't be taken at face value, as though God is playing hide-and-seek with Adam and can't find him. The question has far more importance, for it is a question the answer to which will seal Adam's fate. God is asking "Where art thou?" in the sense of "Where are you standing?" Asking someone where he stands is not a request for physical coordinates. We want to know, for example, where he stands on the issue of abortion or capital punishment or assisted suicide. In Adam's case, the issue is his relation to his Creator. Adam is dreaming that he can hide. He is thinking that he can avoid showing up, But this hiding is itself a way of showing up. God is not mocked or deceived, and neither is fate.
In practice, showing up means that we are willing to be "out there," available to fate. We are willing to be seen, to be found, and to let our being seen and found be as clay in the hands of the gods.
What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.
Epictetus
Socrates was innocent in his ignorance. To be innocent is to be without conclusions, and this kind of innocence is central to living in friendly relation to fate. This doesn't mean that we abandon discernment, but rather that we no longer take our opinions as seriously as we do when we haven't yet recognized the intimate handiwork of fate in our life.
In fate theory and practice, innocence is not a moral or ethical principle any more than is humility. Rather both come from admitting the truth that, as life is a chaotic system, we don't really know in even simple situations as much as we may pretend to know. Indeterminate forces operate deterministically, and we are subject to them. Fate theory explains that there is one thing we can know—that hubris, willfulness, claiming to know things we don't know, taking ourselves too seriously, and refusing to honor "the gods" of chaotic unfolding all draw to us a fate we are bound to regret, while humility, willingness, innocence, humor, and wearing the cloak of our conclusions loosely invite a fate worth celebrating.
Innocence also is rooted in the dialectical and evolutionary nature of truth. We could say that there's always a deeper or greater truth waiting to be revealed just beyond whatever truth we've grasped so far. In other words, life is always bigger than we think, and endlessly surprising. This prompted Einstein to say that imagination is more important than knowledge, and that the only truly valuable thing is intuition. Socrates described the voice of intuition as his daimon, and said that it always warned him when he was about to make a mistake. It is through intuition and our willingness to remain teachable that the gods speak to us. If we proceed down path without innocence, deaf to the voice that whispers to us in the secret inner chamber, then we invite calamity. In hindsight, having taken such a path along with many other physicists, Einstein expressed his regret over the work he had done that led to the development of the atomic bomb: "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
The best scientists know or come to know that every scientific answer unearths a thousand new questions, and their work humbles them. We can only imagine what our world would be like if our leaders embodied this spirit of innocence and humility instead of making endless claims to greatness and rushing off into the next war. We did not create the world we are ruining with our hubris. It was created through the workings of an intelligence that the greatest human minds can't even begin to fathom. Acknowledging this intelligence and our utter dependence on it every moment returns us to "original innocence," and places us in our proper relation to fate. And with the noise of hubris silenced, we can hear our daimon so clearly, we may wonder how we could have missed what it was trying to tell us.
Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please.
Pythagoras
On the path of befriending fate, diligence is a central principle with several aspects. Closely tied to the ancient Greek idea of praxis, it suggests the skillful application of theory and know-how rather than theoretical understanding alone. Diligence includes:
- acceptance of things as they are for now
- living truthfully
- attending to details and being thorough
- honoring and heeding intuitive promptings
- acting responsibly in one's affairs
- recognizing when there's nothing more to do and deferring to the gods.
The sense of relief from burdens that accompanies living diligently is so palpable, it can work seeming miracles—such as restoring health and youthfulness where these had been burdened by willfulness and the stress that invariably accompanies it.
Diligence deepens with practice until it becomes a way of life, and one no longer has any tolerance for one's old ways, in which one or more of the six points above may have gone unattended. By living diligently, we make clear to the gods that we accept our role and our time here, that we prize truth and truthful living, and that we are willing both to do our part and to refrain from trying to do more. Going through the day mindfully, skillfully, and with a truthful acknowledgment of the limits of our will, we avoid tempting fate, and this becomes our offering to the gods.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
Plato
Fate theory reveals a defining feature of human life—that we are in dialogue, participants in an ongoing conversation with the Unseen. Many experience this in a religious context through prayer and meditation, through which they commune with the divine, however they conceive of it. Science undertakes the dialogue with the natural order through the process of formulating hypotheses and conducting experiments, trusting that the universe speaks its nature consistently through the evidence it presents to our senses. Similarly, the arts involve a dialogue of inspiration and expression, one that reaches beyond the artistic medium to point to something greater. So, we have this sense of dialogue as logos, of the gods speaking into expression the events of our lives, and our responding through humility or hubris. This dialogue can't be contrived, because dialogue isn't monologue. We can't anticipate what the gods will say to us. The dialogue has a life of its own. This principle also shows up in dialogue in its more immediate sense of conversation with others. With some, we find that we don't have two words to rub together. There's simply nothing to say. Such people are characters who have no place in our story, and any attempt to hold them in dialogue falls flat. On the other hand, there are those who come into our life with the dialogue already under way, and with these people we never seem to have enough time to say everything there is to say. Even if we are separated from them by many years, the moment of reunion finds the conversation resuming where it left off as though no time had passed at all. The most useful and revealing form of dialogue in this sense is Socratic dialogue, which aims to allow deeper truths to reveal themselves and depends on our willingness to let anything in us that is inconsistent with these deeper truths to be swept away. Finding our place in the caravan of daily events, we are responsible for our participation in the dialogue with the gods, even if that participation takes the form of an unwillingness to participate. Those who choose monologue choose the path of hubris, and in so doing forget what the Greeks knew—that the gods wish to be acknowledged and honored, and that one way or another, they receive their due, and we, ours.
Hubris always involves some attempt to contrive, manipulate, or manage the dialogue with life. Humility flows naturally from understanding our role as listeners and receivers. In our proper relation to fate, then, we follow the dialogue—we don't dictate it. As our skill grows, the dialogue becomes a compass heading that we follow, moving naturally and gracefully into those situations where dialogue has made a place for us, and away from those where we find ourselves forcing, strategizing, defending, justifying, rationalizing, or otherwise exerting our will as though we were greater than what is, in truth, greater than we.
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